A new organisation – the Creative Industries Federation – was launched last night. The aim is to create a voice, lobbying and information, and strategy for the creative industries in the UK. Its Director John Kampfner wrote a piece in the Observer newspaper about the CIF. City University is one of the founder supporters of…

Andy spoke (on Friday 21 Nov) at the final event of an EU research project on creative hubs across Europe. The project is called ‘In compass‘ details can be found on the link. Simply, the project surveyed 6 cities and compared and contrasted creative innovation hubs (usually buildings containing incubators for small creative businesses). The…

MA students taking Jo Littler’s elective module Public Culture visited Sadler’s Wells this week. Sadler’s Wells is a world-renowned home for contemporary dance and its main site is just around the corner from City University. We had a talk and tour from Director of Community and Engagement, Fiona Ross (also a City MA alumni) who…

BA CCI students visited London’s Photographer’s Gallery this week. They had a guided tour of the current exhibitions (on fashion photography) by a curator, who introduced the exhibitions and spoke about how the gallery was founded, how it is funded and how it functions.

Last week BA CCI students visited the Chocolate Factory Open Studios in Wood Green, London. The Chocolate Factory provides affordable studio and workspace, hosting more than 200 artists across the creative industries including photography, painting, sculpture, design, fashion, jewelry, new media, music, film and more. Denise Stanley, a cultural and creative industries specialist and honorary…

Debbie Dickinson will be taking part in ‘Jazz Rants’ at the London Jazz Festival on Wednesday 19 November! George McKay is Professor in Residence at this year’s jazz festival where he is chairing some events that feature musicians, producers and academics talking about various aspects of jazz. Debbie, who has a strong background in jazz…

Call for Papers: Cultural Policy at the International Conference of Public Policy 2015 Department PhD student Kate Mattocks, along with Lisa Marx from the University of Geneva, has organized a panel at the upcoming International Conference of Public Policy happening from 1-4 July 2015 in Milan. The panel approaches cultural policy from a political science/policy…

Prof Andy Pratt was interviewed as part of an article about ‘making Town Planners cool‘ in the Guardian today (in the Cities section). The article, written by Tom Campbell who happens to have written a novel called The Planner, and used to be a senior cultural planner at the GLA, is really about the way…

This week Jo Littler has travelled to Skopje in Macedonia where she opened the conference ‘Popular Culture: Reading From Below’ with her keynote paper ‘Normcore plutocrats and everyday elites’. The conference has around 130 attendees, particularly from around the Balkans.

Last week CCI student Aikaterini Karavida had her PhD viva, and passed subject to the usual minor corrections. Aikaterini’s thesis was entitled:“The Thessaloniki Biennale: the agendas and alternative potential(s) of a newly founded biennial in the context of Greek Governance”. Well done also to Jo and Marisol her supervisors. Congratulations all round!